It was exactly a year ago today that I lost my beloved mother and absolute best friend, Carol Diane Gibbs Collins at 64 years old. I stayed by her side for the week that she was dying, her last words to me were "I love you" before she became uncommunicative for days. I didn't know what to do today, so I just drove to the nursing room where she died, sat in my car in the empty visitor parking lot with Mom's ashes for little while until the minute of her death. I even wore the exact same clothes I wore on that tragic day. I'm just very sentimental and traditional in that way. It was overcast and drizzly last year, the kind of days that Mom loved; today, it was partly sunny and hot.
A year later, and things aren't all that much better in life; I just go through the motions in life: work, home, going out with a friend or two not often enough anymore. Things just aren't the same anymore; nothing's fun or exciting, because just about everything in my life had Mom right by my side. My twin, my next door neighbor, and my soulmate, gone 20 years too soon. I'm an only child, my father is useless, Mom's extended family hasn't been there for me, and obviously I don't have a spouse and kids. I had no money for grief therapy, so I've grieved alone for a year. I think about my momma every waking hour of my life.
